“You couldn’t even kill Jordan Mayes without my help! What makes you think you can kill Violator without me?”

Denny did not reply.

The flashlights closed to within fifty yards. It looked like the men carrying them had picked up speed on the treacherous hill. “What is it they say in this town?” Suzanne asked. “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” Blood dripped from her lips, ran up her face and into her eyes. She listened for a response on the other end of the line, but nothing came. “You know what I bring to the table here. You need support. You need a witness in-house who saw Gentry kill Mayes. The other cars on the road are going to report multiple attackers. You can’t sell your story this time without help.”

Still nothing. She wondered if he’d hung up.

“You’ve come so close, Denny, but you are getting sloppy. Desperate. I can give you the backing you need to see this all the way through.”

The flashlights were only twenty-five yards away. She could already make out the silhouettes of the men behind the moving beams.

She thought of something else, one more Hail Mary. If this didn’t work, she’d be dead in seconds. Hanging here upside down, a bullet in her brain. “Morvay!”

Denny spoke now. “What’s that?”

“Kevin Morvay. He is a senior tech in SIGINT. He has the Dupont video. He’s seen it. He showed it to Mayes.” She sniffed tears and blood. “You see? I am helping you.”

All three flashlights centered on Jordan Mayes’s body.

Denny said, “And I appreciate your help. Good-bye.”

“I can get it from him! And get it off the system. I know how, do you? I can do so much more. I can . . . hello? Hello?” It sounded like Denny had either hung up the phone or set it down on a table. Suzanne Brewer started to cry openly. She shook hard against her seat belt, but she couldn’t get it off. She thought of screaming, begging, pleading into the phone, but she just bit her lip. No, it wouldn’t work, and she told herself she wouldn’t die like that.

The lights were on her now.

A man knelt down, peered into the vehicle, and the high-lumen light shined right in her face, unbearable, worse than her broken leg.

She shut her eyes and sobbed again. Her bloody nose almost gagged her.

Then, with a shocking suddenness, the light turned away.

She heard the wet slapping of feet on rain-soaked brush, the clap clap of boots trudging through mud. Suzanne opened her eyes and looked around. Through the stars in her eyes she saw them now, the dark silhouettes. They stood around the body of Jordan Mayes a brief time, then they began retrograding up the hill, back in the direction of the motorcycles parked along the road.